


Marked By The Absence Of Melodies

by impossiblesongs



Series: Pages Left To Write On (We Will Fill It With Words) [3]
Category: Doctor Who
Genre: Gen, I live a Pond Appreciation Life, Post Episode: s06e01-e02 Impossible Astronaut/Day of the Moon, Post-Episode: s06e08 Let's Kill Hitler
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-07
Updated: 2014-09-01
Packaged: 2018-02-12 04:29:28
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,012
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2095806
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/impossiblesongs/pseuds/impossiblesongs
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>This is River Song, I’m not in my cell presently but I will break back in sooner or later. Leave a message if you like and, who knows, I may even get back to you sometime this century.”</i>  -  Rory stays behind when Brian catches a cold and makes a very important phone call while the wife is away.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Marked By The Absence Of Melodies (1/2)

**Author's Note:**

> **DISCLAIMER** : Not my characters. This has been a disclaimer.  
> 

**Chapter One:** Marked By The Absence Of Melodies (1/2)  
Characters: Rory, River  
Rated: G  
Summary:  _"This is River Song, I'm not in my cell presently but I will break back in sooner or later. Leave a message if you like and, who knows, I may even get back to you sometime this century."_  - Rory stays behind when Brian catches a cold and makes a phone call while the wife is away.

AN: Fic Title & Chapter title inspired by/from the book  _The Time Traveller's Wife_  by Audrey Niffenegger. The timeline for Rory takes place post-6x08 ( _Let's Kill Hitler_ ), about a month after dropping River off at Sisters Of Infinite Schism ; for River post-6x02 ( _Day Of The Moon). RATINGS MAY VARY._

* * *

 

 

His dad had unfortunately caught a very nasty case of the sniffles, the ones that go around this time of year. It's the first time in forever that's Rory stayed behind when the Doctor comes around. Then again, the only reason he'd been left behind before was because he was not aware of his fiance running off into all of time and space with a space idiot - as River often called him. Of which the Doctor undoubtedly was at times. At least he knows of it now. Of the Doctor, of the amazing wonders of the universe... of his very own daughter. Being aware of them meant that Rory had come to love them all. Unconventional as they were they'd become a family. A pretty great one at that.

 

It had been the right thing to do. Staying behind. One should always make looking after their dads a priority after all. So far, in 'Rory Time', Amy's only been gone for the weekend but knowing the Doctor's habit of wandering his wife may have been several weeks away. No matter. Time alone was odd but he made due. Actually, during that time he'd had time to think about the last adventure with the Doctor and how he'd been avoiding what had happened.

 

Like dads, daughters also fall under the category of priorities, only they should be right at the top of the list.

 

*

 

“ _This is River Song, I’m not in my cell presently but I will break back in sooner or later. Leave a message if you like and, who knows, I may even get back to you sometime this century._ ”

 

*

 

 

It takes a while for Rory to realize he’d been holding his breath during the entirety of River’s answer machine message. To say he was nervous would be an understatement. He waited patiently for that little sound to go off. The one that meant he could start talking. Well… it came, and every single ounce of courage he’d mustered to make this phone call slipped away, gone and out of his reach. His throat closed up in a wretched way. It was exactly the one that happened when Mels outed his feelings for Amy all those years back.

 

And just like that, his mind spirals off into itself and starts sorting through every single memory he had of Amy and their best friend Mels and himself.

 

 _My own daughter set me up with her mum._ He swallows, a twisted sort of affection entwining with an equal amount of dread at the entire situation, and then it dawns on him. _That’s why… that’s the reason Mels hadn’t come to our wedding. The wedding night… the night Amy and I… when we…_

 

Rory felt sick to his stomach. It was one thing for their daughter to have gotten her own parents together but it was a completely different thing for their daughter knowingly having to avoid them on their wedding day because she’d be created that very night. Yes, oh yes, this was too much.

 

All the things, these impossible, inconceivable things that have come to make up their life – the three of them – feels so overwhelming. How queer and difficult and mindboggling it is to be caught in this tangled sort of web throughout all of time and space. The times they’ve met, whether on purpose or just out of the blue, he realizes what they are now. They’re miracles and as he’s come to learn that miracles come with a cost. He can feel the pressure that weighs down now that he knows and is aware of them. How once things have happened they would have to keep on happening exactly as they had. How there is no changing their pasts or it was their futures that would suffer for it. All of these incidents, each and every one, the good and the bad, more often than not they'd manage to take his breath away. To crush every ounce of his heart. 

 

Then the grief sets in, because it’s not fair. He has a daughter, but the only way he would ever know of her meant he’d always have to lose her first in order to get to this point. It’s a hard thing to accept. He’s not sure if he ever will. And Amy’s even less likely to do so. He knows how it eats her up inside. Losing Melody has marked them both, but each in different ways. Sometimes it’s hard to relate to each other in their separate experience of their shared loss but no matter how horrible a nightmare they had been lucky enough to have ended up lost together; together, because together they can do and get through anything .

 

Overtaken by his little meltdown, Rory hadn’t realize the call had been disconnected. All that played back at him was the dial tone. He pressed the _end call_ button and sat in silence for a bit.

 

He mulls over the mess of it all and snaps out of it, annoyed by his own analytical thoughts because he's been looking at them wrong. He almost wishes Amy were around to slap him in the face because in all his brooding there’s one massive key point that’s managed to go right over his head. Their lives should have been enough to tear them apart inside and out but it _hadn’t_. They weren’t a proper mess. Their lives were messy, yes, but _they_ were not at all a mess. In fact, countless memories were mess free. Like his 15 th birthday, for instance. He woke up to find a brand new car parked in front of his parent’s driveway and a birthday note resting on its windshield. A birthday note signed with an initial rather than her name. He remembers being so confused. He'd not even known Mels cared enough to know when his birthday was. He’d certainly never told her, but she’d still known and she’d gone and gotten ( _STOLEN_!) him a car. His _favorite_ car.

 

Then he’d gone and read the birthday card.

 

_Rory, her name is Snogbox and consider her a ‘Get On With It Already’ present because honestly mate just snog the girl already._

 

Gods, he’d been absolutely mortified that someone had caught on to his crush yet it was disappointment he’d felt the most. He’d given Mels a proper scolding for that one, and she’d smiled all through that hour long reproach. She was smug and gleeful by the time he’d finished and so he’d assumed that she took none of his upset to heart – this was Mels he was talking to, after all – and almost without meaning to, he found himself responding in kind. Smiling at those insolent, reckless ways of hers. Ultimately, in the end, he'd thanked her for the highly illegal gift. It must have taken an awful amount of effort to pull it all off and all for his benefit. Making her return it was also a highlight.

 

He knows why she'd smiled now. That scolding had been their first, their proper first. She’d been born on Demon’s Run but she’d been stolen from him. There had been no starting to the father and daughter _ness_ until that very day, his 15th birthday. Knowing Mels for so long also meant he'd practically been a father ever single day of his life he’d just not realized it yet.

 

Rory looked back down at the phone he had clutched in his hand. He dialed the number to his daughter’s prison cell again. When her answering message finished Rory cleared his throat and he spoke.

 

“River! Hi, erm, hello. It’s uh… it’s your Dad. R-Rory, I mean. It’s me, your Dad… Rory. I was just wondering if you’d like to pop in for a cuppa or maybe we could go out for scones or... anything. I could take you to buy bullets for your guns even or... erm, anything at all. Right. Absolutely Dad’s treat, yeah?”

 

Pathetically, his awkward sense of self came back and he’d gone and ended the call without so much as a Goodbye. Oh, the shame that overcame him.

 

“Oh, good one, Rory. Well done.” He muttered to himself.

 

“I’ll say!” said a voice full of mirth.

 

Rory turned to find none other than River Song. 

 

_To Be Continued…_


	2. Marked By The Absence Of Melodies (2/2)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“You’re safe now.” He says, then decides adding on something entirely of his own. “You’re home.”_ \- Things get much more complicated when Rory wears his nursing goggles and notices things.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I was taken to the hospital on the 23rd ~~yes, you read that right, on THE DW PREMIERE DAY and I missed the first episode I was so upset~~ and have since been recovering and that's why the ginormous lack of updates is happening. Please forgive me for that and also because I oops-ed and all I have to show for it now is the angst. Next part will be a bit chipper, I promise.
> 
> **DISCLAIMER:** Not my characters. This has been a disclaimer.

**Chapter Two:** Marked By The Absence Of Melodies (2/2)  
Characters: Rory, River  
Rated: G  
Summary: _“You’re safe now.” He says, then decides adding on something entirely of his own. “You’re home.”_ \-  Things get much more complicated when Rory wears his nursing goggles and notices things. 

AN: Fic Title & Chapter title inspired by/from the book  _The Time Traveller's Wife_  by Audrey Niffenegger. The timeline for Rory takes place post-6x08 ( _Let's Kill Hitler_ ), about a month after dropping River off at Sisters Of Infinite Schism ; for River post-6x02 ( _Day Of The Moon). RATINGS MAY VARY._

* * *

 

 

It’s a bit unnerving to be so suddenly not alone and Rory’s honestly not got a bastard clue as to where he intended on starting off. River, who is standing almost impeccably still in his presence, sort of beams as his ineptness. He stares at the woman he knows to be his daughter for longer than is necessary and recons if Amy were there she’d have already pointed this out to him at full volume. He’s grateful to be spared of that but then again, without Amy there, he’s on his own and he’s honestly not sure he can get by without need of a little help.

 

“You rang.” River prompts, the brow she has raised tells him at least she’s getting some comedic value at how out of depth he is. But _bless her_ , he thinks, because that gets his head in the right of him.

 

“I didn’t expect you so soon.” Rory hurries in admitting. He even waves the phone he still has in his hands for added measure. “See, just made the call and everything.”

 

River’s nose wrinkles up and to his surprise she apologizes.

 

He frowns. “What for?”

 

She waves it away with a hand and starts asking after Amy. He tells her she’s off on her own this time and River looks even more unsettled than before.

 

“Oh,” she mutters a tad bit distractedly and starts moving out of the room, heading off into the kitchen. He’s left with no choice but to follow after her.

 

The cupboards are banging away as she reaches for contents to make a cup of tea. Her actions are so effortless and knowing, so _at-home-here_ , that he wonders how often she’s around at theirs, his and Amy’s.

 

“You know it should be me fixing that.” He says conversationally and she glances at him. He’s completely off put by the smile she offers him. It doesn’t fill her face up the way he’s used to. He’s never seen River, or Mels for that matter, as anything but a force to be reckoned with but there something off, something that makes him want to reach out and put both hands on her shoulders until she wipes that smile off and sets some truth in her features.

 

“Are you alright, River?”

 

“I’m absolutely fine.” However smooth her delivery and however steady her eyes are on his, her hands are all a jitter. It takes him all but a round of seconds to slip on his nursing goggles and then he looks, properly looks… and then he notices.

 

“You’re,” he swallows the words. They seem to be on the tip of his tongue but they’re not exactly the most cooperative either. So there they stand, all gone silent but for the stirring River has now resumed. She finishes preparing her tea and calmly takes a sip. She doesn’t deny his assumption, not in any way, and he mentally makes a checklist of all the pregnancy-friendly teas he’ll pick up next time he’s at the grocers.

 

“Where are you exactly?” River asks him at last. When he fails to do anything but gape at her like a fish she carries on. “I’ve just come back from America.”

 

“America.” He repeats. “Yes, I’ve done America too actually.”

 

River nods, calm but passive. In fact the only emotion he can really read off her is resignation. “And going by how you called yourself ‘dad’ in that message you left on my answering machine you’ve also done Berlin.”

 

Rory cringes. Now or never.

 

“Just done, actually.” Her eyes widen a fraction at this. “Dropped you off at the hospital and that’s the last we’ve saw of you.”

 

“Oh,” and she huffs out a breathless sort of laughter, her hand falling to rest on her chest as if it could somehow reach in and take grip of her stuttering heart. “Then all this really is far too early for you.”

 

That brave face of hers, really the only one he’s ever known her to wear, now fully crumbles to bits. Rory’s up and moving before anything else can be said. He’s pulling River, his Melody, over into his arms and wrapping them securely around her.

 

He thinks of the grown woman he and Amy left behind in the hospital in their last adventure with the Doctor, how completely indestructible she had been, even then, and then he considers the one in his arms here and now. River is burrowing against him almost instinctually, trusting in his comforts completely.

 

America comes at him. Utah. The running and the Silence. Of River and following her into those underground tunnels at the Doctor’s request. She had been scared down there in those tunnels but it had nothing to do with an alien takeover.

 

_I just felt a bit sick. It's the prison food, probably._

 

She’d gone and Rule One’d him and he hadn’t had a clue. He recalls the following confessions that came spilling from her mouth so easily. Naturally, he’d wondered why him? She seemed to get on with Amy better anyway.

 

_When I first met the Doctor, a long, long time ago, he knew all about me._

 

He knows now, god does he know.

 

_The day is coming when I'll look into that man's eyes, my Doctor, and he won't have the faintest idea who I am._

 

She was scared little girl looking to daddy to make all the bad things go away.

 

_And I think it's going to kill me._

 

He finds himself repeating the words her mother had told her when she woke in the hospital, after Berlin.

 

“You’re safe now.” He says, then adding on something entirely of his own. “You’re home.”

 

By the way River’s shoulders sag in relief and her breath seems to be actual breathing instead of choked-off, gasping sounds it is clear that she believes him.

 

“Hang on a minute,” Rory jerks back and looks her dead in the eye, a touch of hysteria joining in. “River, you jumped off a building!”

 

The tips of her lips curl upward at his accusation. “That I did.”

 

“But, but, but,” Rory sputters, gaping at his very grown daughter and gesturing at her stomach with his hands. “You’re with… with _child_!”

 

The tears are not yet dry on her eyes but his worry sets off a joy to her. She starts to laugh. It bubbles out of her and she’s helpless too it. The giggles consume her entirely and he can only stand there and at least _try_ to appear adult and cross about such carelessness.

 

“This is no laughing matter.” Rory scolds lamely. “You’re carrying my unborn grandbaby in there!”

 

That comment sobers River from her giggling fit spectacularly.

 

“River,” Rory places a gentle hand on her shoulder to keep her good and grounded. “What are you going to do?”

 

 “I can honestly say I never expected this. And the way things look on my end he’s going to keep getting younger. And…. And I can’t.”

 

Once again Rory is reminded how much older she is from where they’d last seen her. This _is_ River Song in front of him, not one who is just becoming, and it’s as if she is still somehow just as lost.

 

“I know what has to be done, I’ve already made an appointment at a hospital, but,” She looks down at her stomach and a genuine smile warms up her face. “For now I think… I’d like someone to be with me while it lasts and… and I’d sort of counted on that person to be you.” She admitted. “I expected you to be farther on in our timeline but, well, here we are.”

 

He can see her. That lost little girl in the spacesuit. The one whose nappies he never got to change and whose monsters took her before he could scare them away.

 

“I’m your dad, River.” He tells her. “And there’s nowhere else I’d rather be.”

 

She smiles. “We’re sorted then?”

 

Rory takes her hand and says it again. “You’re home. River, you’re home now.”

 

River exhales slowly and gives him a nod, another set of tears gathering and ready to fall from her eyes. “Good.”

 

Her hand tightens around his and she asks what she should name it. Rory smiles back at her and plays along. “Anything but the Doctor Jr.”

 

The rest of her visit is spent as such. A father and his daughter dreaming up images of and for the child in her womb… while it lasts.

 


End file.
